The rise of technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing has facilitated moving various applications previously associated with dedicated and standalone hardware onto machines providing shared hardware resources. This so-called “server consolidation” allows for a fuller utilization of available resources and, therefore, a decreased cost associated with underutilized resources. For example, energy consumption, floor space, and other server costs may be reduced by retiring servers that were previously only lightly utilized.
Server consolidation can lead to various unwanted effects, however. The increased utilization of hardware resources can increase the hardware's failure rate. These failures may then impact applications utilizing the hardware. Further, under current architectures, when a hardware component of a field replaceable unit (FRU), such as a blade or rack mount server fails, the, unit often must be replaced or repaired, removing the resources associated with the unit from the pool of resources available for application execution, even though most hardware components of the server may remain operational.